August 9–19, 1993
It worked better than we ever could’ve hoped. While Zhora, Verochka, and Lev Moiseyevich were off touring Khryakino, people were pouring in for their dividends. Chaos and crowding reigned in the trading hall. The staff couldn’t keep up. Depositors were on edge. The cashier handed out cash, and handed it out, and handed it out.
In three days we parted with nine thousand dollars. Over the previous two weeks Zhorik had been converting every incoming non-cash ruble into dollars for a rainy day. The rainy-day fund ran dry.
On the morning of the fourth day I arrived at the office and froze. The hallways were bursting with visitors. People were crowding, bustling, signing up in line, all wanting to become gold shareholders. They came pouring in by the family, by entire work collectives.
Zhorka’s office was packed with people from morning to night. This time not officials or bankers, but middlemen offering to privatize this or that piece of state property. I didn’t stick my nose into Zhorik’s business. I stacked the incoming vouchers like a dockworker — neat, unbroken piles — and worked on a different problem.
Depositors were hauling in cash, too, beyond the vouchers, in packages and boxes. The funds went into Zhorik’s safe in bricks. The safe turned out not to be bottomless. We started packing the overflow into empty booze boxes left over from previous parties.
Zhorik looked over the intake printouts and summed up:
– We’re swimming in cash. Gotta think how to put the loot to smart use. For now we’re dumping the cash on Bug-Eyes.
Noticing I didn’t follow, Zhorik explained that Vadim had gotten into cash conversion. Market rate was ten percent. We’d hand him cash and get back a hundred and seven percent onto a non-cash account. Besides, it wasn’t smart to keep piling up money in the safe. God forbid Chicha found out. He’d be capable of it. He’d stage a robbery, the narrow-minded idiot.
