“We will defer to your judgment,” Tom said with the easygoing smile I recognized as the grin of a shit eater.
Kozlovsky, feigning innocence of our conversation, asked to see the original proposals of the top three bidders. He studied them for some time, blind to the nervous smirks around the room. I watched Kablukov. Under his dark glasses, he appeared to be entering some kind of vascular distress. He loosened his necktie and wiped his head with a handkerchief.
“One of these seems to want to charge us quite a steep rate,” Kozlovsky pointed out.
It was Mukhov, good foot soldier, who jumped first to the defense of Sausen. All the old arguments tumbled out again—they had a superior relationship with the Swiss banks, a clean safety record, blah blah blah. “It appears they have no record,” Kozlovsky suggested calmly. Only one argument was not raised in Kozlovsky’s presence, and that was the excellent relations Sausen Petroleum had with the company president, Mr. Abuskalayev. On this matter, neither Mukhov nor Serdyuk, and not even Kablukov, spoke a word.
“It looks like the real choice here is between Jessem and Sovcomflot. Of course, I would naturally favor one of ours, nashih, but that,” Kozlovsky said, “is only my own prejudice, and I know that you will make your own decision.”
He waited until we did. Sovcomflot it was, after a unanimous, if not entirely eager, show of hands.
—
OUTSIDE, I LOOKED UP and was surprised to find the sky as blue as I had ever seen it.
“What happened in there?” Tom said, his hand shielding his eyes from the sun, which bounced off in streaks from the obsidian shine of the L-Pet complex.
“A mystery wrapped in an enigma,” I said.
“I still can’t get my head around it. I thought Kablukov had the final word.”
“Every thief has a boss.”
“Well, we got what we wanted, I suppose.”
So now it was we. “I guess we were courting the wrong asshole,” I said.
“Let them sort it out,” he said. For the first time since I knew him, Tom seemed not to be certain what his next words would be. He rubbed his smooth chin distractedly. “Who can figure it out with these goddamn Russians,” he finally concluded. He seemed to want to change the topic. “We were all waiting for you. Why were you late?”
I contemplated telling him where I’d been fifteen minutes prior to the meeting. But it was better, I decided, to let the doggies sleep. Tom suggested we go take in some sights in the hours left before our flight, check off a box from the tourist column. But I excused myself from playing tour guide. I had more pressing business to take care of. I crossed the street to the other side of Sretensky Boulevard and entered a coffee shop housed in a building of dingy pink brick. And that was when I called Lenny.
It took two tries before he picked up. “Sorry, Pop, I was on the toilet,” he confessed with typical Lenny bluntness. “Is it time for your flight already?” I felt relieved to hear his voice. Things had wrapped up early, I said. Then I proposed that we take our promised trip to Izmailovsky Market. Hunt for some classic sovietskii junk.
Long pause. “Um, Pa. I think we sort of missed that boat. Most of the booths are closed on weekdays.”
“Oh, I’m sure there’ll be some desperate auctioneer trying to unload his old Leica. Maybe we’ll find something worth some real money.”
He seemed to be hesitating.
“Please come with me,” I said. “It would make me happy.”
And as I said it, I realized it was true. But I was unprepared for the rush of gladness that flooded my heart when he said, “Okay, I’ll meet you there.”
The flea market was mostly deserted, as Lenny had predicted. But I thought I liked it better this way, the two of us wandering along an empty street of open-air stalls in the shadow of a tsar’s wooden fortress painted like Disneyland. Lenny picked up a porcelain panda, then set it down again. I caught him checking his watch. “Help me pick a gift for your mother,” I suggested.
“How about this?” He held up a green rubber gas mask.
“It’ll be from you, not from me,” I warned.
I wanted Lenny to catch my treasure-hunting fever, but it was true that we’d missed our chance. Only a fraction of the shops were open, and those that were did their business in the most touristy gimmicks: Yeltsin matryoshka dolls and military paraphernalia. My eyes were still gritty from my lack of sleep, but I felt an enlivening rush knowing Lenny wasn’t due for trouble anytime soon.
“Mom hates this kind of shlock,” Lenny informed me as we walked into a stall full of books and posters.
“That isn’t entirely true,” I said. “She can appreciate a good piece of kitsch as much as anybody.” By way of example I approached the vendor, a fellow with a stringy beard and a long face that resembled those on the religious icons (of dubious origin) that lined the back wall of his stall. “Do you have any anti-capitalist art?” I said.
The man knitted his brow as though I’d just asked him to drop his pants. “Cho?” he said.
“Posters,” I clarified, “with fat capitalists—you know, in top hats, puffing on cigars.”
“What kind of store do people think this is?” he said, offended. Lenny and I exchanged looks. Amid the literature spread out on the tables around us was a catalogue of paintings by Marc Chagall, an Almanac of Mushrooms, Lenin’s The Emancipation of Women (penned by his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya), an illustrated pamphlet of the Protocols of Zion, an Estonian album of Forbidden Erotica, and the autobiography of Bill Clinton. “I have absolutely no idea,” I said.
—
“LET’S GET SOMETHING TO eat,” I suggested, interrupting Lenny’s reading of an American serviceman’s phrase book dated from 1962 (the same year, I noted with curiosity, as the Cuban Missile Crisis). He lifted his eyes and gazed out toward the Disneyfied Izmailovo fortress. “I used to really hate coming to places like this,” he said suddenly.
“You did?”
“Yeah, they made me think of her.”
I knew right away whom he meant. “Irochka.”
He gave me a smirking smile.
I hadn’t meant to be coy. That was simply what I’d always called her—the daughter of my old friends, and later, of course, Lenny’s ex-wife. Not Irina, but our Irochka was what all of us had called her, first tenderly, then with an edge of irony and malice that could never quite negate the original tenderness.
“That first summer I came back here,” he said, “it was ’96, she’d take me around the city. All these pensioners selling their heirlooms laid out neatly on newspapers. Their lifetime collections of little pins or porcelain cups, or crystal bowls.”
“They still do that.”
“No, not like then. The inflation was out of control. They were selling off anything just to eat. It was so fucking depressing, and here I was with my wallet stuffed full of American dollars.”