Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [50]
“Meaning from the Party?”
“Yes, to be plain, but it’s not necessary.”
“This is capitalism?”
“No, this is not pure capitalism; this is an intermediate stage of capitalism.”
“Can the joint venture take rubles out?”
“No.”
“Can it take dollars out?”
“No.”
“This is a very intermediate stage.”
“It can take oil. Or vodka.”
“We have that much vodka?”
“For sale abroad.”
Arkady asked, “All joint ventures must be approved by you?”
“They should be, but sometimes they aren’t. In Georgia or Armenia they tend to make their own arrangements, which is why Georgia and Armenia don’t ship anything to Moscow anymore.” He giggled. “Fuck them.”
His office was on the tenth floor with a view of squalls moving east to west. No factory smoke, though, because parts hadn’t arrived from Sverdlovsk, Riga, Minsk.
“What did TransKom register as its purpose?”
“Importation of recreational equipment. It is sponsored by the Leningrad Borough Komsomol. Boxing gloves, things of that nature, I suppose.”
“Like slot machines?”
“Apparently.”
“In trade for what?”
“Personnel.”
“People?”
“I guess so.”
“What kind of people? Olympic boxers, nuclear physicists?”
“Tour guides.”
“Touring where?”
“Germany.”
“Germany needs Soviet guides?”
“Apparently.”
Arkady wondered what else the man would believe. That the baby Lenin left coins under pillows in exchange for teeth?
“TransKom has officers?”
“Two.” The man read from the file in front of him. “Many positions, but all filled by two people, Rudik Davidovich Rosen, Soviet citizen, and Boris Benz, a resident of Munich, Germany. TransKom’s address is Rosen’s. There may be any number of investors, but they’re not listed. Excuse me.” He covered the file with Pravda.
“The Ministry has no names for the tour guides?”
The man folded the newspaper in halves and quarters. “No. You know, people come here to register a venture to import medicine, and the next thing you know they’re bringing in basketball shoes or building hotels. Once conditions exist here for a free market, it will be like watering the ground.”
“What will you do when capitalism is in full swing?”
“I’ll find something.”
“You’re inventive?”
“I have to be.” From a drawer he took a ball of string, bit off an arm’s length and put it and Pravda in his jacket. “I’ll walk you out. I was on my way to lunch.” Bureaucrats survived on the butter, bread and sausage they took home from cafeterias. The jacket was loose and its pockets were jowls dappled with grease.
Vagankovskoye Cemetery was lovingly but casually tended. A coverlet of wet leaves lay unswept around limes, birches, oaks; dandelions were allowed to line the walk, and overall spread the soft embrace of natural decay. Many of the gravestones were busts of Party stalwarts hewn from granite and black marble: composers, scientists, writers of Socialist Realism with broad brows and commanding gazes. More timid souls were represented by photographs set like cameos on their stones. Since the graves were surrounded by iron fences, the faces on the tombstones seemed to peer from black bird cages. Not all, though. The first grave inside the gate belonged to the roughneck singer-actor Vysotsky, and was heaped so high with daisies and roses freshly watered by the rain that it stirred with the hum of bumblebees.
Arkady found his father’s funeral procession halfway down the central path. Cadets bearing a star of red roses and a cushion covered with medals were followed by a porter pushing a handcart and coffin, then a dozen shuffling generals in dress dark-green uniforms and white gloves, two musicians with trumpets and two with dented tubas playing a funeral march from a sonata by Chopin.
Belov was in the rear guard, wearing civilian clothes. His eyes lit when he saw Arkady. “I knew you would come.” Solemnly he pumped Arkady’s hand with both of his. “Of course you couldn’t stay away, it would have been