“Go home and have your mother look at that cut.” He helped him get up.
“Don’t worry, Jack. I’m fine. I’ll pick the glass out and get back to work.”
“That won’t be necessary, Jim.”
“Seriously, boss, it’s just a scratch. I’ll clean up and—”
“I said it won’t be necessary. I’m sorry, kid, but you’re fired.”
He didn’t regret it. He knew that, sooner or later, some Soviet would show up in the village asking for an explanation, and Jim would be in trouble. He wasn’t wrong: Walter now considered himself every inch the Soviet, and that afternoon he visited Jack, demanding an apology. Jack remained impassive. He assured Walter that he knew nothing about the reason behind the confrontation between the Daniels boy and Paul Farmer, and that, in any case, everything had been resolved. “All I did was separate them. You should ask them.”
“Come on, Jack! The entire village knows you’re running the food. The Soviets are starting to fume.”
“Really? Then let them fume. Like I say, all I did was stop a fight.”
“Maybe you’d be more interested if you knew that I’m fuming, too.” Walter gave Jack a recriminating look through the lenses of his metallic glasses.
“Well, blow me down. You’re fuming? You, who since joining the party, have been on double rations?”
“Look, Jack. I just came to warn you. There are more and more confrontations among the Americans, and the OGPU won’t allow a little—”
“Cut the crap, Walter! Let’s get things clear, shall we?” He got to his feet with the help of a crutch. “First off, I don’t know in what capacity you’ve shown up here, asking for an explanation. Are you here as an old friend who wants to help, or as a new Soviet who can’t stand someone else making more money than he does?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“I’d love to.” Jack’s tone hardened.
“Then listen up: I’ve been named head of security for the American camp, and I’m not going to allow anyone in my village—”
“Oh! Your village! Maybe I should bow.”
“You can be as sarcastic as you want, but better I come than the Black Crows. Damn it. All I want is for everyone in this village to live in harmony. And the way things are, with troublemakers and saboteurs all around, the last thing we need is to start fighting among ourselves.”
“Among ourselves? The first thing you and Sue did was leave the village.”
“Well, if you want some advice, you should do the same and move to the city. Then you’ll stop making people envious, living in a palace when all the other workers are cramped together in rooms the size of wardrobes.”
“I see! And who’ll pay for that? You, or the guys who’ve provided those new spectacles and that uniform?”
“It’s just a suggestion.” He pushed his glasses up his nose with his index finger.
“Great. Then let me give you another: you’d do well to look out for your fellow countrymen more, and less for the Soviets. Since you became an OGPU deputy, it seems to have been smooth sailing for you, but for the Americans being prevented from going home, or the ones disappearing, or the ones dying of hunger because of the miserable rations the Soviets allow them, this is no paradise.”
“All right, Jack. So you want to get things clear. Then let’s do that, because all these calamities don’t seem to have prevented you from turning a buck! Who are you to set yourself up as the champion of the people, when you only remember them when it’s time to make money?”
Jack could see that the conversation was only going to lead to a quarrel that he neither wanted nor needed. Like the rest of the Americans at the Avtozavod, Walter probably thought Jack’s money all came from the contraband, which must have been what made him very angry. However, he couldn’t let on that his income came directly from Hewitt, and that it was his pay in exchange for the dangerous mission entrusted to him, or that Sergei Loban himself knew of his commercial activities, as he preferred to call them, and consented to them.
At the same time, and though it pained him to admit it, Walter’s accusation was to some extent right. As much as he tried to dress up his black-market dealings as a public service, the fact was that he was profiting from his fellow Americans’ needs. And perhaps Walter was also right that he would be wise to leave the American village. He could afford it, and if he struck a deal with Ivan Zarko’s nephew, the move wouldn’t stop him from continuing his business in the village store.
He guessed that if he humored Walter, his friend would be pleased. “Maybe . . . ,” he croaked, as if struggling to get the words out. “Maybe I should think about it. I don’t know . . . Maybe moving isn’t such a bad idea,” he finally said.
“Trust me, it’s the right thing to do,” Walter replied with the satisfied expression of someone who’d defeated his adversary. “Let me know when everything’s done. We’ll all be better for it, you’ll see.”
Two days later, Walter himself helped Jack into the car that would take him to the Avtozavod. Once settled in the backseat, Jack looked out of the window. The day had started wet. The driver cranked up the car, and Jack wrapped himself up in his jacket. “Thanks for coming to get me, Walter. Sergei summoned me urgently. The other day I knocked my wound, and I can barely walk.”
“It’s no big deal. It was on my way. Have you thought about what you’re going to do with your things?” He showed no interest in Jack’s hip. “I mean all the stuff you’ve collected at your house—the heater, the samovar, the billiard table . . . Are you going to sell it or take it with you? When I told Sue you were moving to the city, she thought you might have too much stuff.”
Jack shook his head. “Truthfully, I hadn’t even thought about it. I might get rid of a few things, but I haven’t seen the accommodation they’ve found for me yet. I spoke to a Soviet friend, and for now I’m going to move into a little house that’s empty in downtown Gorky.”
“A little house? You should mind the friends you keep. In the Soviet Union, owning your own home’s forbidden.”
“I don’t know who it belongs to, and I don’t care. I’m just renting it. But if you’re interested, I know a few high-level OGPU officers who live in impressive dachas.” The car passed some burned-out warehouses, and he took the opportunity to change the subject. “What happened there?”
“A mob of counterrevolutionaries. The anti-Soviet pickets stopped the factory running for a few days, but the OGPU’s militias brought them into line,” he said proudly, as if he truly saw himself as a member of the secret police.
Jack gazed at the ruins.
The car stopped in front of Sergei Loban’s office, where Jack was going to apologize for his absence from work. Walter accompanied him to the door and waited until the director of operations had invited him in.