August 18, 1998
Tuesday
3:00 p.m.
I came to Mayakovsky Square and stopped. Remembered Valerka’s last words.
Jostled, bumped into, cursed at, I stood crosswise to the scurrying crowd and registered how it kept poking at me, shoving me aside with shoulders, rushing past – other people’s focused lives. And mine?
Tens and hundreds of millions in currency, mathematically counted as mine, spent on enterprises generating a semblance of profit. Yet on paper, I had no connection to a single one of them. Zhora had structured the holding cunningly, always saying: «Never lived rich before, no reason to get used to it now. Money today, gone tomorrow. Why ask for trouble? Register the outfit under the night watchman’s name!»
How categorically right Zhorik had been, I understood today, letting talk wash right past me about a chief accountant who didn’t exist in nature and my imminent arrest as General Director. Officially, I was broke as a church mouse. Unofficially, millions of pounds sat in Barclays. Forty of them, or maybe seventy.
Over the savings, I’d argued with Zhorka – wanted to invest the funds in modernizing the plants, put them to work. Zhorik laughed until he cried, until he hiccupped – what kind of business could there possibly be in this country? Only a criminal one! Stockpile the cash in accounts at reliable banks. Risk diversification!
So I stockpiled. After the first million, I felt exhilaration; after the second, satisfaction. The tenth barely registered as a footnote in memory. How much was on the account now? Unclear. Less than a hundred million – that much was certain. A sum like that, I would have remembered.
For the hundred-thousandth time, Zhorik turned out to be right. Not letting me spend what I’d earned – that was good. What was bad was that he’d vanished. How was I supposed to get to those millions without a passport, burned up overnight? Cross the border on goat trails, only to come back the next morning without a hat and in one boot? Go into hiding? Rely on myself? In what city? In what country? In what era?
Claw my way from rags to riches all over again?
I had neither the strength nor the will to repeat the last five years – it was pointless. Raised for life in a country and a time that no longer existed, I’d been thrown into the sands, where it was war of every man against every man. The first time, I’d been lucky enough to claw my way out, like a beginner gets lucky. A second time, I was doomed.
What was I supposed to do?
Walking down Gasheka Street, past the zoo, the American embassy, and the House of Government, I came out onto the Smolenskaya Embankment. Stood by the parapet. Looking at the churn of water below, I understood I had no strength left for living. Satan had been right. My life had held everything already. Nothing new would come along. Even if I made it out to Tunbridge Wells or Miami, it would all just repeat itself as before. Nothing left to do here. Time to go back.
