INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS. At the end of 1989, I left for the OCCIDENT via Berlin. It was the quickest way to the kingdom of heaven, the only place in the IMPERIUM where the nerves of that other organism were just beneath the skin’s surface, just beyond the wall. When the delicate membrane gave way and the two bloods intermingled, Romanian gypsies, Mongols, Bulgarians, Slovaks, and Croats all hurled themselves through the breach: all those who, in the depths of the IMPERIUM, felt the sudden diminution of pressure in their swim bladders and came racing in myriads and droves to prosper in this new ocean.
But in 1989 we were also moving through the prehistory of the amassment of fortunes, the initial accumulation, devoid of Victorian sideburns or the tedious 3 percent per annum. There was oil in Western Siberia, emeralds in the Urals, diamonds in Yakutia, all of them affaires of such powerful magnetism that even if you approached them timidly, thousands of kilometers from the golden epicenter, you could become rich between nightfall and dawn.
I needed money; this was the principal correlative to my discovery in the (CHINESE) PALACE, the half-sphere indispensable to achieving the critical mass of full frivolity. I went to West Berlin with several kilos of Caspian caviar smuggled in jam pots. (I’m not ashamed to confess this: I had endured long five-year plans in the IMPERIUM, subjected to inhuman budgets of a few rubles per month.) I invested the earnings from that sale in renting a small room and found myself a job washing dishes in a bar: the astonishing automatic dishwasher there, a beautiful and useful machine; the illusion of doing easy work, which in fact was not easy at all. Now I know that I was running the risk of losing my way in a labyrinth of petty expenses where I might have wandered for years, stumbling in the darkness against unpaid invoices and excessively high prices. But one evening, there in the kitchen of that bar, I read a headline in the Berliner Zeitung sticking up from the cook’s jacket pocket. I plucked it out with my damp fingers. The great news, thanks to which I am here today telling you this story, sipping this 1935 Massandra here in YALTA. (Waiter, please. . Perfect.)
Verkauf, Inkauf. Easy to decipher. Verkauf im summer. . A plan to auction off quite a bit of pretty decent East German merchandise. To clear kilometers of shelves in preparation for the Bundesrepublik’s great leap forward. All the department stores of Dresden, Potsdam and Karl-Marx-Stadt up for sale. For ridiculously low prices! I sat down to ponder the news. The sound of glasses clinking and customers laughing reached me from the bar: workers and small property owners, perhaps a few professionals. Nobodies, in a word, with their small monthly incomes. I went outside, crossed the street, and went into the bar that was opposite. I stayed there for an hour, looking at the buildings, at this other bar. All this could be mine!
And so, well, I managed it. Because I was in on the secret: I knew that to make money, to grow rich, was a virtue. I had passed through the straits of Marxism and rediscovered a simplicity that was Adamic (in the Smithean sense), an excellent theoretical grounding for a more fitting use of the ABACUS. Listen: All systems, either of preference or restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. Every man, as soon as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interests in his own way, and to bring both his industry and his capital into competition with those of any other man or order of men. We’re saved! I managed to divert the contents of some Leipzig stores into the depths of Eurasia. That was all. Since then, I’ve chartered airplanes from Southwest Asia, cargo ships full of goods from China.
“Products from Turkey? I’ve heard there’s a real glut of Turkish merchandise.”
“No, Chinese merchandise.” (The silk route: Bukhara and Samarkand.)
J
JOSIK, JOSHELE, JOSEPH. We sat down next to the windows overlooking the plaza. I said to LINDA, “This is where you exclaim ‘I’ve never seen such a luxurious place before!’”
She glanced up from the menu. “Are you sure you have the money for this?”
“LINDA, I spent more than a year amassing the capital for this novel, thinking about a restaurant like this one (or even finer) and a redheaded girl like you. The budget for the dinner scene is more than adequate, as you’ll see. It’s only eight p.m. We’re just getting started.”
LINDA said, “I want to write you a letter.”
As if instead of a white tablecloth between us there were kilometers of arid landscape, desert dunes. She insisted. “There are some things I want to tell you.”
She wanted to gaze directly into my eyes via the immediacy that only epistolary communication can confer. Allow me to introduce here the first one she wrote that night.
Her first letter, as if from afar.Hello JOSIK: This morning I’d been having intense thoughts about a bag of oranges. It’s been about half a year since I’ve eaten an orange. When you told me about your plan, I thought you’d be able to buy lots of them. I don’t mean that was the only reason I agreed to go along with you, but sometimes I dream about baskets brimming over with oranges. I would go to Morocco just for the oranges. From any port on the Black Sea we’d be there in five days. We could also eat our fill of bananas. You grew up surrounded by fruit, that’s why you’re such a good person. I realized this when we were strolling through the garden. I suffer from vitamin deficiencies in the spring; my gums bleed. Even my hair loses its shine. Your teeth are good, too, like a movie star’s. We’ll make a very good couple in Crimea. I like your plan more and more. Thanks to which I remembered oranges.Bye.Nastia
I. The morning after our dinner at the Astoria, Maarif brought me a second letter from LINDA. She never explained why she was writing me again so soon. Apparently Maarif had made a jealous scene, which she brought to a close by punishing him with the task of serving as messenger boy between us. (And thus, after the vulgar fashion of a vulgar love triangle, was the plot thickening.)
Her second letter was full of lies.Hello JOSHELE: I have to tell you the truth about my nose. My real last name is Katz. I had a grandfather named Kats or Katz who went to America to make his fortune. .It couldn’t be true! My pursuit of SOSHA’S Hebrew tresses had brought me directly to a Katz! He was from LVOV: Bruno Schulz, Sholem Aleichem, an unexpected twist. I continued reading:. . came back ten years later and without so much as going home to give his children a kiss went to the VILLAGE tavern and spent eight hours there, not once stepping outside for a breath of air. He gambled away all his savings at cards, and then, with nothing else to wager, his house. That same morning, before day had dawned, someone killed him out of pity. He didn’t have enough years of life left to go back to Chicago and save up the money to pay that debt. My grandmother nailed an ace of spades to the coffin and paid two gypsies to lead the funeral procession, throwing out playing cards to the crowd. It was a terrible vengeance. When I think that a quarter of my blood is Hebrew. .