June 26, 1993
Saturday
12:50 PM
Andrei Gusarov, a good man, offered tea — green or black, my choice — heard out Zhorik’s whisper, and shook his head: Not gonna work.
Zhorik, thrown off but not out of hope, asked for two green teas and recalled that just the other day he’d inherited some porcelain figurines dating to the conquest of Ochakov.
I looked around: we were sitting in the pass-through archway of a five-story building on the Arbat, bricked up at the back and dressed up at the front with an entrance under a sign reading «The Arbat Gate.» Conjured an antique shop out of thin air. Zhora asked him to appraise the inheritance… The inscrutable face of the antiquarian, pawnbroker, buyer-of-anything, and general everything-man stayed inscrutable:
— Not gonna work.
Zhora shot me a look: what are you sitting there for, let’s go! Nothing to catch here, we’re wasting time!!!
Andrei, ignoring the looks, fussed with some junk in a cabinet, shifted a vase on the table, and grumbled out a couple of interjections. Zhorik froze. I went quiet too. There it is! Andrei was muttering:
— Well. Like. So. It’s hard… Might work out… for somebody else…
Zhorik’s eyes lit up — «Hooray, we’re breaking through…» — He set his teacup down on the table and gave a reluctant-looking nod: deal us in, we’ll wait…
Andrei went into the back room. I noticed a display case with wristwatches: Cartier, Patek Philippe, Rolex… The plainest ones were called Breitling.
Zhorik caught my dreamy look and called into the back room:
— Andryukh! That Breitling hot?
— Genuine article. Seven hundred.
— If you help us out, we’ll take it.
Silence.
Ten minutes passed. I started to get nervous — maybe something had happened. Maybe something had gone wrong… I wasn’t allowed to finish the thought.
Andrei came out of the back room, walked up to the display case, fished out the Breitling, and handed it to me. Then he laid a slip of paper in front of Zhora with some digits scrawled on it, looking like a phone number. Zhorik asked:
— Can I say you sent me?
Andrei shrugged — no guarantee it’d help, but sure, go ahead.
Zhorik vanished into the back room.
I turned the chronograph over in my hand, admired the hands, the dial, the bracelet. Tried it on, studied it… Gorgeous!!!
Someone slapped me on the shoulder.
— Leave the ticker.
Then, past me:
— Andryukh, hold it till tomorrow. We’re off to see the digger, — Zhorik rattled off instructions.
We stepped out of the shop onto the Arbat and looked around. Tourists of every stripe wandered by — from seasoned hitchhikers to courtly foreign visitors — while vendors of nesting dolls, whistles, and other folk-craft trinkets loitered about. Zhorik furrowed his brow, trying to remember something important. He remembered:
— Right, Romka. Gotta grab some grub. You know a place to chow down around here?
— No idea.
— Lousy. Business doesn’t fly on an empty gut. Where are we eating?
— Well, — I said uncertainly. — There’s a dumpling place on Herzen Street… it’s good.
— Know it. Might as well mention that dive on Nogina while you’re at it. Man, it’s rough without a car. We’d zip over to Palik’s, grab a bite in no time. All right, no use drooling over it. Let’s go see what a Parabellum looks like on an empty stomach.
