“Artyom, is teeny tiny little building, not real estate,” said Tolya in his fake Russki accent. “Times are not so good, Wall Street goes down the toilet, economy is shit, so I like to buy real estate for my kids, you know? I buy them little bit in New York, what can ever happen with real estate, right? Also, they like America. They are Americans,” he said. He chuckled, a big man’s laugh. “America, all is money, all is shopping malls and consuming,” he said, and when I mentioned his eighteen pairs of bespoke Gucci loafers, some in rare skins, all with eighteen-carat gold buckles, he only shrugged. “Shoes are Italian,” he said, and broke up laughing.
Tolya Sverdloff didn’t like America much. He didn’t like the politics, he didn’t like what he figured was the land of George W. Bush. He kept a place in the city, he did business here, bought and sold real estate-the huge penthouse near Sutton Place, the SoHo loft, another one in the Meat Market district. He claimed most of it was for the kids, for Val who loved the city and considered herself an American, and her sister at med school in Boston.
In the Soviet Union, Sverdloff’s parents had been stars among the Communist Party faithful, and well rewarded for it, his mother a movie star, his father a director. He grew up with access most kids like me had never dreamed of, and I didn’t have it bad as most.
The parents idolized certain American writers like Arthur Miller and Clifford Odets, actors like John Garfield in his day, and Bogart and Brando and musicians like Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger, but they had the Russian intellectuals’ prejudice against American culture.
To Tolya they said rock and roll was redneck music. He didn’t listen. Rock and roll was what got him through the Soviet years, he always told me, though it was the British stuff he loved most. The Beatles were his redemption and his rebellion as a teenager in the USSR, his line in the sand. “We didn’t rebel politically, there wasn’t any point, but we went into internal exile with the forbidden music,” he said. “It was different country then, this US of A,” he told me. “Music was incredible then.”
We argued. He pulled my strings. We drank. I told him, when I had had plenty of Scotch, that he was a sell-out, a rock and roll hero who became a businessman. He beamed whenever I said it. Money was his art now, the richer he was, the greater an artist. He was my best friend and he had saved my ass more times than I could count.
“You really love him, don’t you?” Val had said to me once, and she was right, of course, but we didn’t talk like that, we talked like guys.
That night, sitting on the roof, we drank too much and suddenly, sometime very late, Tolya said, “I’m going to London on Sunday, Artemy.”
“Already?” I thought about Valentina.
“Like I told you, I will spend my birthday there in my lovely city, this beautiful green place,” he said, pushing the graying black hair back from his huge forehead. “London!” he said, as if it were a woman he was crazy for. “This is so beautiful a city, you should come. Come next week. My birthday is next week. We’ll have a party. I’ll take you to my place in the country also, which is eighteenth century, and so beautiful and was previously owned by very famous politician.”
“What’s the big deal with London?”
“It is sympathetic to good food and great wine, and also to Russians, and it is a civilized country, a civil society, a place of laws and culture.”
“Enough about bloody London,” a voice said, as Val came through the door, walked across the roof, kissed me on the cheek, sat on the arm of Tolya’s chair and flung her arm around her father. “You’re obsessed,” she said.
“Hello, darling,” said Tolya. “What would you like?”
“I’d like for you not to go to London.”
“I won’t stay too long. I promise.”
“But we could have a nice summer here, we could go out to the house in East Hampton, we could go fishing together in Alaska, like we said, wherever you want. Please, Daddy?”
“Afterwards. I promise you.” He looked up at her, surveyed the floaty green summer dress she wore, and smiled. “You look nice.”
“Thank you.”
He loved his daughter better than anything on earth. They were connected in the most elemental way, father and daughter. I was jealous, not because I wanted her-which I did-but because of the way they were together. I have no kids. It makes me sad.
“Artie, the club, was it okay?” said Valentina. “You found what you needed?”
“What club?” said Tolya.
Again I held off telling him about the dead girl. It wasn’t just that he’d set up his own guys to investigate it. Maybe I didn’t want Val upset.
“It’s nothing. I was helping out a guy on a case in Brooklyn.”
“It’s Bobo Leven?” he said.
“Yes, but it doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t but whenever he comes in the club, I watch him, he’s like, what do you call it, grapevining all over you, listening to you, trying to pick your brains out,” said Tolya who was pretty drunk now.
“You’ll go swimming with me tomorrow?” said Valentina.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll call you in the morning.”
“Not too early. I’m going to a party.”
“Now?” Tolya said, glancing at his watch.
“I’m a big girl, Daddy,” she said. “Daddy?” She got up and then squatted near her father, and took his hands. “Don’t go. Please.”
“What’s bothering you?”
“I don’t know. I just have this bad feeling, like I ate something off. They do bad stuff to Russians in London.”
“But I’m very small potatoes, my darling, nobody is going to bother me,” said Tolya. “I’m not Boris Berezovsky, after all.”
“Please?”
“I’ll think,” he said. “Don’t nag.”
She kissed him and got up to go. Tolya called after her.
“What is it?”
He took an envelope out of his pocket, and handed it to her. She looked inside and smiled. “Thanks, Daddy. That’s nice.” She kissed the top of his head. “You’re turning gray. You’ll have to start dyeing your hair,” she giggled. “See you both tomorrow, okay? Love you.”
When Val had gone, Tolya asked me again if I wanted to come to London with him. I said I couldn’t. What I didn’t tell him was that I wanted to stay in New York where Val was, that I wanted to go swimming with her and take her to dinner.
“How come Val’s so worried?” I said.
“She thinks they’re killing Russians, some silly shit, Artyom, in London.” For a split second he looked uncomfortable, then he said, “But this is just small, little part of things, and who except English would give asylum to so many people, and protect against bad guys? Also, me I am not in that league of oligarchs. I’m little guy, Artyom,” he said, dropping his articles everywhere, making himself sound like a peasant, as if he didn’t know better.
“But you’d like to be, wouldn’t you? A big guy,” I said, and saw that it bothered him, that his eyes shifted inwards. He wanted it. He wanted the whole thing. It gave me the creeps. It turned him into a man I didn’t really recognize. Then it passed. He laughed, and we had some more to drink, then he stretched out his legs, inspected his cigar, looked out at the Hudson River, then back at me and said, “It’s just business.”
“What kind of business? In London?”
“Restaurants. Wine. All my life I know that without good food, life is nothing, so now I am in the good-food business. In Europe they understand this. In Russia they understand. You have no idea, Artemy, these Russians, these guys, Dellos, Navikov, they get big respect, they are considered true food guys and they are Russians, not French or Italian, and they understand restaurants, they are changing Moscow, they spend money, they buy great chefs, and now they open up in London, London has become wonderful Russian province along with food center of the universe now.” He reached over and turned on the CD player, and put his head back and closed his eyes. “Tito Gobbi,” he said. “Don Carlos. Gorgeous, yes?”