March 18, 1994
Saturday
11:00 a.m.
I slept better at home than in the hospital, though the wounds and cuts itched just as much. My backside hummed like a transformer from all the shots... ugh...
A nurse had moved into the apartment. I don’t remember her face, but I remember her soft hands. After each shot I’d drop into a doze, dreaming and still hearing everything, right down to the ticking of the minute hand on the wall clock.
Zhorik later told the story of that week with the nurse, sketching shapes in the air: tits like this! ass like this! face — the spitting image of Goldie Hawn, and there you were lying there like a zucchini offering up your backside. Oy vey, what a broad!
After the pantomime, Zhorik bragged that he’d hooked Chicha up with Putchist, who was handing out loans left and right. There wasn’t a better debt collector in all of Moscow. Chicha’s athletes would squeeze the debt out of anybody. Putchist, by the way, had already been renamed Pinochet.
«What’s in it for us?» I didn’t get why Zhorik was so pleased. I’d been hoping he’d sic Chicha on my enemies and make them disappear.
«Roma, you are officially a valenok! I could issue you a certificate! Haven’t you noticed the market’s flooded with booze? We can’t just skim off both ends the way we used to. The free ride’s over. We’re expanding. Don’t worry, switch on Search and Destroy! We need to find a project to invest in and go all in! Half a million’s already sunk into the booze business, and that’s not right. You’re supposed to spread your money over the whole plantation, not bury it under a tree like Pinocchio!»
Zhorik dashed to the fridge, then to the cabinet, filled a glass with liquor, drained it:
«Follow the logic. Chicha squeezes goods out of Pinochet’s debtors. What do we do with the squeezed goods? Right! Sell them through your little dolls. Have them find out the going market rate and undercut it slightly, no dumping. Two-thirds goes to Chicha and Vadik, a third to us for development. You following?»
«No.»
«You really are a valenok! What did the quacks say? When do you go back to work?»
«In a week.»
«Excellent. You start the day after tomorrow! Karabas will pick you up in the Durandal — it’s yours now. I got myself a sweet Beemer, named it the Balmung. Watch how we work the stuff Chicha brings in. If it sells well, keep the operation running. Don’t sweat where to get more — Pinochet will hand over the paperwork filled out when the loans were issued. Supplier contacts, purchase prices, all the details you need. We clear it through customs via Anton. Whichever little doll sells the most of Chicha’s goods, you make department head and give them one job — generate profit.»
Zhora took off. A day later I showed up at the office looking like a movie commissar, wrapped head to toe in bandages. The guys were cracking up: «Watch that arm, Senya!»
A month passed. I sat in my office, going through reports, stunned by Chicha’s enthusiasm: he was unloading two or three truckloads of consumer goods into Khryakino every week. Chicha’s crew no longer numbered a dozen sharp-eyed kids like before, but three times that many, and twice as big besides. Blacked-out Cherokees, Pajeros, Tahoes, Explorers, and Land Cruisers, along with countless VAZ «Eights,» parked outside the Terem.
The results of Chicha’s enthusiasm were unsettling. Somewhere in the back of my mind stirred a discomfort with the fact that Chicha was robbing honest businessmen and I was profiting from it. But in the front of my mind, new rules took hold: don’t waste my money and you’ll be spared Chicha’s attention.
I funneled the profit into Vatrushka. It financed borrowers. If loans went unpaid, measures were taken to recover them. Chicha was returning my own money through a roundabout, casuistic method — but it was the method available.
I’d sigh and head off to the institute for my practicum. Things at Proma carried on without me.
